We approached another doorway, cut into the rock. Light poured out, comparatively bright, and I heard a noise, chattering, high-pitched, and continuous, like seagulls on a rock.

There were babies in here. They were all very young, no more than a few months old. The walls were painted bright primary colors, and the rock floor was covered by a soft rubber matting, on which lay the babies—all pale, all wispy-haired, all with blank gray eyes—so many I couldn’t even count them. The air in the room was hot, dense, moist, laden with sweet infant smells of milk and baby shit. As I gazed in at this the women of the Order pressed around me as they always did, warm and oddly sweet-scented themselves; a part of me wanted to struggle, as if I were drowning.

“From our oldest inhabitants,” said Rosa dryly, “to our youngest.”

“It’s all true, isn’t it, Rosa?” I asked her with cold dread. “Just as Lucia said. You turn young girls into old witches and keep them alive, keep them pumping out clutches of kids every year, until they’re a hundred . . .”

She just ignored me. “You never had children, George. Well, neither did I. We have our nephews, I suppose, out in Miami Beach. I’ve never even seen them . . .” Her hand tightened on mine, and her voice was insistent, compelling. It was almost as if I were talking to myself. “You never meant to be childless, did you? But you never found the right woman—not even the girl you married—never managed to create the right environment around yourself, never found a place you felt comfortable. And the years went by . . . No kids. How does that make you feel? Our little lives are brief and futile. Nothing we build lasts—not in the long run—not stone temples or statues, not even empires. But our genes endure—our genes are a billion years old already—and they will live forever, if we pass them on.”

“It’s too late for you,” I said brutally.

She flinched. But she said, “No, it isn’t. It’s never too late for any of us—not here.

“Look at these children, George. None of them are my own. But they are all—cousins. Nieces, nephews. And that’s the reason I will always stay here. Because this is my family. My way of beating death.” Her face seemed to float before me in the gloom, intense, like a distorted reflection of my own in smoky glass. “And it can be yours.”

At first I didn’t understand. “Through nieces and nephews?”